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Rousseau, that enthusiasticpanegyrist of the State of Nature, steered clear of it; and a manendowed with exquisite delicacy, of a tenderness of heart full ofunction, a spiritualist even

that is to say, to arrive, by means of natural and gratuitous agents,

at the same results as by efforts He accomplishes by the wind, bygravitation, by heat, by the elasticity of the air, what he accom-plished at first only by muscular exertion

Now what happens? Although the effect is equally useful, theeffort is less Less effort implies less service, and less serviceimplies less value Each step of progress, then, annihilates value;but how? Not by suppressing the useful effect, but by substitutinggratuitous for onerous utility, natural for social wealth In onesense the portion of value thus annihilated is excluded from thedomain of Political Economy, just as it is excluded from ourinventories It is no longer exchanged, bought, or sold, andmankind enjoys it without effort and almost without conscious-ness It is no longer accounted relative wealth, but is rankedamong the gifts of God

But on the other hand, if science takes it no longer intoaccount, the error is assuredly committed of losing sight of whatunder all circumstances is the main, the essential thing—theresult, the useful effect In that case we overlook the strongesttendencies toward community and equality, and discover muchless of harmony in the social order If this book is destined toadvance Political Economy a single step, it will be by keeping con-stantly before the eyes of the reader that portion of value which

is successively annihilated, and recovered, under the form of tuitous utility, by mankind at large

gra-I shall here make an observation that will prove how quently the sciences unite and nearly flow into each other

fre-I have just defined service fre-It is the effort in one man, whilethe want and the satisfaction are in another Sometimes the serv-ice is rendered gratuitously, without remuneration, without anyservice being exacted in return It proceeds, then, from the prin-ciple of sympathy rather than from the principle of self-interest

It constitutes gift, not exchange Consequently it would seem toappertain not to Political Economy (which is the theory ofexchange), but to morals In fact, acts of that nature, by reason oftheir motive, are rather moral than economical We shall see,

however, that, by reason of their effects, they concern the sciencethat now engages us On the other hand, services rendered for anonerous consideration, on condition of a return, and, by reason

of that motive (essentially economic), do not on that accountremain excluded from the domain of morals, in so far as theireffects are concerned

Thus these two branches of knowledge have an infinite ber of points of contact; and as two truths cannot be antagonis-tic, when the economist ascribes to a phenomenon injurious con-sequences, and the moralist ascribes to it beneficial effects, wemay affirm that one or other of them is mistaken It is thus thatthe sciences verify and fortify one another

W ANTS OF M AN

It is perhaps impossible, and, at any rate, it would not be of

much use, to present a complete and methodical catalogue ofhuman wants Nearly all those of real importance are com-prised in the following enumeration:

Respiration (I retain here that want, as marking the boundarywhere the transmission of labor or exchange of services begins):Food—Clothing—Lodging—Preservation or Re-establishment ofHealth—Locomotion—Security—Instruction—Diversion—Sense

of the Beautiful

Wants exist This is a fact It would be puerile to inquirewhether we should have been better without wants, and why Godhas made us subject to them

It is certain that man suffers, and even dies, when he cannotsatisfy the wants that belong to his constitution It is certain that

he suffers, and may even die, when in satisfying certain of hiswants he indulges to excess

We cannot satisfy the greater part of our wants without pain

or trouble, which may be considered as suffering The same may

57

be said of the act by which, exercising a noble control over ourappetites, we impose on ourselves a privation.

Thus, suffering is inevitable, and there remains to us only achoice of evils Nothing comes more home to us than suffering,and hence personal interest—the sentiment that is branded now-a-days with the names of selfishness and individualism—is inde-structible Nature has placed sensibility at the extremity of ournerves, and at all the avenues to the heart and mind, as anadvance guard, to give us notice when our satisfactions are eitherdeficient or in excess Pain has, then, a purpose, a mission We areasked frequently, whether the existence of evil can be reconciledwith the infinite goodness of the Creator—a formidable problemthat philosophy will always discuss, and never probably be able tosolve As far as Political Economy is concerned, we must take man

as he is inasmuch as it is not given to imagination to figure toitself—far less can the reason conceive—a sentient and mortalbeing exempt from pain We should try in vain to comprehendsensibility without pain, or man without sensibility

In our days, certain sentimentalist schools reject as false allsocial science that does not go the length of establishing a system

by means of which suffering may be banished from the world.They pass a severe judgment on Political Economy because itadmits what it is impossible to deny, the existence of suffering.They go farther—they make Political Economy responsible for it

It is as if they were to attribute the frailty of our organs to thephysician who makes them the object of his study

Undoubtedly we may acquire a temporary popularity, attractthe regards of suffering classes, and irritate them against the nat-ural order of society, by telling them that we have in our head aplan of artificial social arrangement that excludes pain in everyform; we may even pretend to appropriate God’s secret, and tointerpret his presumed will, by banishing evil from the world.And there will not be lacking those who will treat as impious ascience that exposes such pretensions, and who will accuse it ofoverlooking or denying the foresight of the Author of things

These schools at the same time give us a frightful picture ofthe actual state of society, not perceiving that if it be impious toforesee suffering in the future, it is equally so to expose its exis-tence in the past or in the present For the infinite admits of nolimits; and if a single human being has since the creation experi-enced suffering, that fact would entitle us to state, without impi-ety, that suffering has entered into the plan of Providence.Surely it is more philosophical and more manly to acknowl-edge at once great natural facts that not only exist, but apart fromwhich we can form no just or adequate conception of humannature.

Man, then, is subject to suffering, and consequently society isalso subject to it

Suffering discharges a function in the individual, and quently in society

conse-An accurate investigation of the social laws discloses to us thatthe mission of suffering is gradually to destroy its own causes, tocircumscribe suffering itself within narrower limits, and finally toassure the preponderance of the Good and the Fair, by enabling

us to purchase or merit that preponderance The nomenclature

we have proposed places material wants in the foreground.The times in which we live force me to put the reader on hisguard against a species of sentimental affectation that is nowmuch in vogue

There are people who hold very cheap what they disdainfullyterm material wants, material satisfactions: they will say, as Belisesays to Chrysale,

“Le corps, cette guenille, est-il d’une importance, D’un prix a

meriter seulement qu’on y pense?”

And although, in general pretty well off themselves, they willblame me for having indicated as one of our most pressing wants,that of food, for example

I acknowledge undoubtedly that moral advancement is ahigher thing than physical sustenance But are we so beset withdeclamatory affectation that we can no longer venture to say thatbefore we can set about moral culture, we must have the means

of living Let us guard ourselves against these puerilities, whichobstruct science In wishing to pass for philanthropical we cease

to be truthful; for it is contrary both to reason and to fact to resent moral development, self-respect, the cultivation of refinedsentiments as preceding the requirements of simple preservation.This sort of prudery is quite modern Rousseau, that enthusiasticpanegyrist of the State of Nature, steered clear of it; and a manendowed with exquisite delicacy, of a tenderness of heart full ofunction, a spiritualist even to quietism, and, toward himself, astoic—I mean Fenelon—has said that, “After all, solidity of mindconsists in the desire to be exactly instructed as to how thosethings are managed that lie at the foundation of human life—allgreat affairs turn upon that.”

rep-Without pretending, then, to classify our wants in a rigorouslyexact order, we may say that man cannot direct his efforts to thesatisfaction of moral wants of the highest and most elevated kinduntil after he has provided for those that concern his preservationand sustenance Whence, without going farther, we may concludethat every legislative measure that tells against the material well-being of communities injures the moral life of nations—a har-mony I commend, in passing, to the attention of the reader And since the occasion presents itself, I will here markanother

Since the inexorable necessities of material life are an obstacle

to moral and intellectual culture, it follows that we ought to findmore virtue among wealthy than among poor nations and classes.Good Heaven! what have I just said, and with what objectionsshall I be assailed! But the truth is, it is a perfect mania of ourtimes to attribute all disinterestedness, all self-sacrifice, all thatconstitutes the greatness and moral beauty of man, to the poorerclasses, and this mania has of late been still more developed by arevolution, that, bringing these classes to the surface of society,has not failed to surround them with a crowd of flatterers

I don’t deny that wealth, opulence, especially where it is veryunequally spread, tends to develop certain special vices

But is it possible to state as a general proposition that virtue

is the privilege of poverty, and vice the unhappy and unfailingcompanion of ease? This would be to affirm that moral and intel-lectual improvement, which is only compatible with a certainamount of leisure and comfort, is detrimental to intelligence andmorality

I appeal to the candor of the suffering classes themselves Towhat horrible dissonances would such a paradox conduct us!

We must then conclude that human nature has the frightfulalternative presented to it either to remain eternally wretched, oradvance gradually on the road to vice and immorality Then allthe forces that conduct us to wealth—such as activity, economy,skill, honesty—are the seeds of vice; while those that tie us topoverty—improvidence, idleness, dissipation, carelessness—arethe precious germs of virtue Could we conceive in the moralworld a dissonance more discouraging? Or, were it really so, whowould dare to address or counsel the people? You complain ofyour sufferings (we must say to them), and you are impatient tosee an end of these sufferings You groan at finding yourselvesunder the yoke of the most imperious material wants, and yousigh for the hour of your deliverance, for you desire leisure tomake your voice heard in the political world and to protect yourinterests You know not what you desire, or how fatal successwould prove to you Ease, competence, riches, develop only vice.Guard, then, religiously your poverty and your virtue

The flatterers of the people, then, fall into a manifest tradiction when they point to the region of opulence as an impuresink of greed and vice, and, at the same time, urge them on—andfrequently in their eagerness by the most illegitimate means—to aregion which they deem so unfortunate

con-Such discordances are never encountered in the natural order

of society It is impossible to suppose that all men should aspire

to competence, that the natural way to attain it should be by theexercise of the strictest virtue, and that they should reach it nev-ertheless only to be caught in the snares of vice Such declama-tions are calculated only to light up and keep alive the hatred of

classes If true, they place human nature in a dilemma betweenpoverty and immorality If untrue, they make falsehood the min-ister of disorder, and set to loggerheads classes who should mutu-ally love and assist each other.

Factitious inequality—inequality generated by law, by ing the natural order of development of the different classes ofsociety—is, for all, a prolific source of irritation, jealousy, andcrime This is the reason why it is necessary to satisfy ourselveswhether this natural order leads to the progressive ameliorationand progressive equalization of all classes; and we should be

disturb-arrested in this inquiry by what lawyers term a fin de

non-recevoir, a peremptory exception, if this double material progress

implied necessarily a double moral degradation

Upon the subject of human wants, I have to make an portant observation—and one that, in Political Economy, mayeven be regarded as fundamental—it is, that wants are not a fixedimmutable quantity They are not in their nature stationary, butprogressive

im-We observe this characteristic even in our strictly physicalwants; but it becomes more apparent as we rise to those desiresand intellectual tastes that distinguish man from the inferior ani-mals

It would seem that if there be anything in which men shouldresemble each other, it is in the want of food, for, unless in excep-tional cases, men’s stomachs are very much alike

And yet aliments that are rare at one period become common

at another, and the regimen that suits a Lazzarone would subject

a Dutchman to torture Thus the want that is the most ate, the grossest of all, and consequently the most uniform of all,still varies according to age, sex, temperament, climate, custom.The same may be said of all our other wants Scarcely has aman found shelter than he desires to be lodged, scarcely is heclothed than he wishes to be decorated, scarcely has he satisfiedhis bodily cravings than study, science, art, open to his desires anunlimited field

immedi-It is a phenomenon well worthy of remark, how quickly, bycontinuous satisfaction, what was at first only a vague desirebecomes a taste, and what was only a taste is transformed into awant, and even a want of the most imperious kind.

Look at that rude artisan Accustomed to poor fare, plainclothing, indifferent lodging, he imagines he would be the hap-piest of men, and would have no further desires, if he could butreach the step of the ladder immediately above him He is aston-ished that those who have already reached it should still tormentthemselves as they do At length comes the modest fortune he hasdreamt of, and then he is happy, very happy—for a few days.For soon he becomes familiar with his new situation, and bydegrees he ceases to feel his fancied happiness With indifference

he puts on the fine clothing for which he once yearned He hasgot into a new circle, he associates with other companions, hedrinks of another cup, he aspires to mount another step, and if heever turns his reflections at all upon himself, he feels that if hisfortune has changed, his soul remains the same, and is still aninexhaustible spring of new desires

It would seem that nature has attached this singular power tohabit, in order that it should be in us what a ratchet-wheel is inmechanics, and that humanity, urged on continually to higher andhigher regions, should not be able to rest content, whateverdegree of civilization it attains

The sense of dignity, the feeling of self-respect, acts with haps still more force in the same direction The stoic philosophyhas frequently blamed men for desiring rather to appear than to

per-be But, taking a broader view of things, is it certain that to appear

is not for man one of the modes of being?

When by exertion, order, and economy a family rises bydegrees toward those social regions where tastes become nicerand more delicate, relations more polished, sentiments morerefined, intelligence more cultivated, who can describe the acutesuffering that accompanies a forced return to their former lowestate? The body does not alone suffer The sad reverse interfereswith habits that have become as it were a second nature; it clashes

with the sense of dignity, and all the feelings of the soul It is by

no means uncommon in such a case to see the victim sink all atonce into degrading besottedness, or perish in despair It is withthe social medium as with the atmosphere The mountaineer,accustomed to the pure air of his native hills, pines and mouldersaway in the narrow streets of our cities

But I hear someone exclaim, Economist, you stumble already.You have just told us that your science is in accord with morals,and here you are justifying luxury and effeminacy Philosopher, Isay in my turn, lay aside these fine clothes, which were not those

of primitive man, break your furniture, burn your books, dine onraw flesh, and I shall then reply to your objection It is too much

to quarrel with this power of habit, of which you are yourself theliving example

We may find fault with this disposition nature has given toour organs; but our censure will not make it the less universal Wefind it existing among all nations, ancient and modern, savage andcivilized, at the antipodes as at home We cannot explain civiliza-tion without it; and when a disposition of the human heart is thusproved to be universal and indestructible, social science cannotput it aside, or refuse to take it into account

This objection will be made by publicists who pride selves on being the disciples of Rousseau; but Rousseau has neverdenied the existence of the phenomenon He establishes undeni-ably the indefinite elasticity of human wants, and the power ofhabit, and admits even the part I assign to them in preventing thehuman race from retrograding; only that which I admire is what

them-he deplores, and them-he does so consistently Rousseau fancied tthem-herewas a time when men had neither rights, nor duties, nor relations,nor affections, nor language; and it was then, according to him,that they were happy and perfect He was bound, therefore, toabhor the social machinery that is constantly removing mankindfrom ideal perfection Those, on the contrary, who are of opinionthat perfection is not at the beginning, but at the end, of thehuman evolution, will admire the spring and motive of action that

I place in the foreground But as to the existence and play of thespring itself we are at one.

“Men of leisure,” he says, “employed themselves in procuringall sorts of conveniences and accommodations unknown to theirforefathers, and that was the first yoke that, without intending it,they imposed upon themselves, and the prime source of theinconveniences they prepared for their descendants For not onlydid they thus continue to emasculate both mind and body, butthese luxuries having by habit lost all their relish, and degeneratedinto true wants, their being deprived of them caused more painthan the possession of them had given pleasure: they wereunhappy at losing what they had no enjoyment in possessing.”Rousseau was convinced that God, nature, and humanitywere wrong That is still the opinion of many; but it is not mine.After all, God forbid that I should desire to set myself againstthe noblest attribute, the most beautiful virtue of man, self-con-trol, command over his passions, moderation in his desires, con-tempt of show I don’t say that he is to make himself a slave to this

or that factitious want I say that wants (taking a broad and eral view of them as resulting from man’s mental and bodily con-stitution) combined with the power of habit, and the sense of dig-nity, are indefinitely expansible, because they spring from aninexhaustible source—namely, desire Who should blame a richman for being sober, for despising finery, for avoiding pomp andeffeminacy? But are there not more elevated desires to which hemay yield? Has the desire for instruction, for instance, any limits?

gen-To render service to his country, to encourage the arts, to inate useful ideas, to succor the distressed—is there anything inthese incompatible with the right use of riches?

dissem-For the rest, whatever philosophers may think of it, humanwants do not constitute a fixed immutable quantity That is a cer-tain, a universal fact, liable to no exception The wants of thefourteenth century, whether with reference to food, or lodging,

or instruction, were not at all the wants of ours, and we maysafely predict that ours will not be the wants of our descendants

The same observation applies to all the elements of PoliticalEconomy—Wealth, labor, Value, Services, etc.—all participate inthe extreme versatility of the principal subject, Man PoliticalEconomy has not, like geometry or physics, the advantage ofdealing with objects that can be weighed or measured This isone of its difficulties to begin with, and it is a perpetual source oferrors throughout; for when the human mind applies itself to acertain order of phenomena, it is naturally on the outlook for acriterion, a common measure, to which everything can be referred,

in order to give to that particular branch of knowledge the acter of an exact science Thus we observe some authors seekingfor fixity in value, others in money, others in wheat, others inlabor, that is to say, in things that are themselves all liable to fluc-tuation

char-Many errors in Political Economy proceed from authors thusregarding human wants as a fixed determinate quantity; and it isfor this reason that I have deemed it my duty to enlarge on thissubject At the risk of anticipating, it is worth while to noticebriefly this mode of reasoning Economists take generally theenjoyments that satisfy men of the present day, and they assumethat human nature admits of no other Hence, if the bounty ofnature, or the power of machinery, or habits of temperance andmoderation, succeed in rendering disposable for a time a portion

of human labor, this progress disquiets them, they consider it as adisaster, and they retreat behind absurd but specious formulas,such as these: Production is superabundant—we suffer fromplethora—the power of producing outruns the power of consum-ing, etc

It is not possible to discover a solution of the question ofmachinery, or that of external competition, or that of luxury, if

we persist in considering our wants as a fixed invariable quantity,and do not take into account their indefinite expansibility.But if human wants are indefinite, progressive, capable ofincrease like desire, which is their never failing source, we mustadmit, under pain of introducing discordance and contradictioninto the economical laws of society, that nature has placed in man

and around him indefinite and progressive means of tion—equilibrium between the means and the end being the pri-mary condition of all harmony This is what we shall now exam-ine.

satisfac-I said at the outset of this work that the object of PoliticalEconomy is man, considered with reference to his wants, and hismeans of satisfying these wants

We must then begin with the study of man and his makeup.But we have also seen that he is not a solitary being If hiswants and his satisfactions are, from the very nature of sensibility,inseparable from his being, the same thing cannot be said of hisefforts, which spring from the active principle The latter are sus-ceptible of transmission In a word, men work for one another.Now a very strange thing takes place

If we take a general or, if I may be allowed the expression,abstract view, of man, his wants, his efforts, his satisfactions, hisconstitution, his inclinations, his tendencies, we fall into a train ofobservation that appears free from doubt and self-evident—somuch so that the writer finds a difficulty in submitting to the pub-lic judgment truths so commonplace and so palpable He is afraid

of provoking ridicule; and thinks, not without reason, that theimpatient reader will throw away his book, exclaiming, “I shallnot waste time on such trivialities.”

And yet these truths that, when presented to us in an abstractshape we regard as so incontrovertible that we can scarce sum-mon patience to listen to them are considered only as ridiculouserrors and absurd theories the moment they are applied to man inhis social state Regarding man as an isolated being, who evertook it into his head to say, “Production is superabundant—thepower of consumption cannot keep pace with the power of pro-duction—luxury and factitious tastes are the source of wealth—the invention of machinery annihilates labor,” and other sayings

of the same sort—which, nevertheless, when applied to mankind

in the aggregate, we receive as axioms so well established that theyare actually made the basis of our commercial and industrial legis-lation? Exchange produces in this respect an illusion of which

even men of penetration and solid judgment find it impossible todisabuse themselves, and I affirm that Political Economy will haveattained its design and fulfilled its mission when it shall have con-clusively demonstrated this—that what is true of an individualman is true of society at large Man in an isolated state is at onceproducer and consumer, inventor and entrepreneur, capitalist andworkman All the economic phenomena are accomplished in hisperson—he is, as it were, society in miniature In like manner,humanity viewed in the aggregate, may be regarded as a great,collective, complex individual, to whom you may apply exactlythe same truths as to man in a state of isolation.

I have felt it necessary to make this remark, which I hope will

be justified in the sequel, before continuing what I had to sayupon man I should have been afraid otherwise, that the readermight reject as superfluous the following developments, which infact are nothing else than veritable truisms

I have just spoken of the wants of man, and after presenting

an approximate enumeration of them, I observed that they werenot of a stationary, but of a progressive nature; and this holds truewhether we consider these wants each singly, or all together, intheir physical, intellectual, and moral order How could it be oth-erwise? There are wants the satisfaction of which is required byour makeup under pain of death, and up to a certain point wemay represent these as fixed quantities, although that is not rigor-ously exact, for however little we may desire to neglect an essen-tial element—namely, the force of habit—however little we maycondescend to subject ourselves to honest self-examination, weshall be forced to allow that wants, even of the plainest and mosthomely kind (the desire for food for example), undergo, underthe influence of habit, undoubted transformations The man whodeclaims against this observation as materialist and epicureanwould think himself very unfortunate, if, taking him at his word,

we should reduce him to the black broth of the Spartans, or thescanty pittance of a hermit At all events, when wants of this kindhave been satisfied in an assured and permanent way, there areothers that arise in the most expansible of our faculties, desire

Can we conceive a time when man can no longer form even sonable desires? Let us not forget that a desire that might beunreasonable in a former state of civilization—at a time when allthe human faculties were absorbed in providing for low materialwants—ceases to be so when improvement opens to these facul-ties a more extended field A desire to travel at the rate of thirtymiles an hour would have been unreasonable two centuries ago—

rea-it is not so at the present day To pretend that the wants anddesires of man are fixed and stationary quantities, is to mistakethe nature of the human soul, to deny facts, and to render civi-lization inexplicable

It would still be inexplicable if, side by side with the indefinitedevelopment of wants, there had not been placed, as possible, theindefinite development of the means of providing for these wants.How could the expansible nature of our wants have contributed

to the realization of progress if, at a certain point, our facultiescould advance no farther, and should encounter an impassablebarrier?

Our wants being indefinite, the presumption is that the means

of satisfying these wants should be indefinite also, unless we are

to suppose Nature, Providence, or the Power that presides overour destinies, to have fallen into a cruel and shocking contradic-tion

I say indefinite, not infinite, for nothing connected with man

is infinite It is precisely because our faculties go on developingthemselves ad infinitum that they have no assignable limits,although they may have absolute limits There are many pointsabove the present range of humanity, which we may never suc-ceed in attaining, and yet for all that, the time may never comewhen we shall cease to approach nearer them.1

I don’t at all mean to say that desire, and the means of fying desire, march in parallel lines and with equal rapidity Theformer runs—the latter limps after it

satis-1 A mathematical law of frequent occurrence, but very little understood

in Political Economy.

The prompt and adventurous nature of desire, compared withthe slowness of our faculties, shows us very clearly that in everystage of civilization, at every step of our progress, suffering to acertain extent is, and ever must be, the lot of man But it shows

us likewise that this suffering has a mission, for desire could nolonger be an incentive to our faculties if it followed, instead ofpreceding, their exercise Let us not, however, accuse nature ofcruelty in the construction of this mechanism, for we cannot fail

to remark that desire is never transformed into want, strictly socalled, that is, into painful desire, until it has been made such byhabit; in other words, until the means of satisfying the desire havebeen found and placed irrevocably within our reach.2

We have now to examine the question—What means have we

of providing for our wants?

It seems evident to me there are two—namely, Nature andlabor, the gifts of God, and the fruits of our efforts—or, if youwill, the application of our faculties to the things nature hasplaced at our service

No school that I know of has attributed the satisfaction of ourwants to nature alone Such an assertion is clearly contradicted byexperience, and we need not learn Political Economy to perceivethat the intervention of our faculties is necessary But there areschools who have attributed this privilege to labor alone Theiraxiom is, “All wealth comes from labor—labor is wealth.”

I cannot help anticipating, so far as to remark, that these mulas, taken literally, have led to monstrous errors of doctrine,and, consequently, to deplorable legislative blunders I shallreturn to this subject I confine myself here to establishing as a

for-2 One of the indirect objects of this work is to combat modern tal schools, who, in spite of facts, refuse to admit that suffering to any extent enters into the designs of Providence As these schools are said to proceed from Rousseau, I must here cite to them a passage from their master: “The evil we see is not absolute evil; and far from being directly antagonistic to the good, it concurs with it in the universal harmony.”

sentimen-fact that Nature and labor cooperate for the satissentimen-faction of ourwants and desires.

Let us examine the facts

The first want we have placed at the head of our list is that ofbreathing As regards respiration, we have already shown thatnature in general is at the whole cost, and that human labor inter-venes only in certain exceptional cases, as where it becomes nec-essary to purify the atmosphere

Another want is that of quenching our thirst, and it is more

or less satisfied by Nature, in so far as she furnishes us with water,more or less pure, abundant, and within reach; and labor concurs

in so far as it becomes necessary to bring water from a greater tance, to filter it, or to obviate its scarcity by constructing wellsand cisterns

dis-The liberality of nature toward us in regard to food is by nomeans uniform; for who will maintain that the labor to be fur-nished is the same when the land is fertile, or when it is sterile,when the forest abounds with game, the river with fish, or in theopposite cases?

As regards lighting, human labor has certainly less to do whenthe night is short than when it is long

I dare not lay it down as an absolute rule, but it appears to methat in proportion as we rise in the scale of wants, the coopera-tion of nature is lessened, and leaves us more room for the exer-cise of our faculties The painter, the sculptor, and the authoreven, are forced to avail themselves of materials and instrumentsthat nature alone furnishes, but from their own genius is derivedall that makes the charm, the merit, the utility, and the value oftheir works To learn is a want which the well-directed exercise ofour faculties almost alone can satisfy Yet here nature assists, bypresenting objects of observation and comparison to us in everydirection With an equal amount of application, may not botany,geology, or natural history, make everywhere equal progress?

It would be superfluous to cite other examples We have ready shown undeniably that Nature gives us the means of sat-isfaction, in placing at our disposal things possessed of higher or

al-lower degrees of utility (I use the word in its etymological sense,

as indicating the property of serving, of being useful) In manycases, in almost every case, labor must contribute, to a certainextent, in rendering this utility complete; and we can easily com-prehend that the part labor has to perform is greater or less inproportion as nature had previously advanced the operation in aless or greater degree

We may then lay down these two formulas:

Utility is communicated sometimes by Nature alone, sometimes by labor alone, but almost always by the cooperation ofboth

To bring anything to its highest degree of UTILITY, the action

of Labor is in an inverse ratio to the action of Nature

From these two propositions, combined with what I have said

of the indefinite expansibility of our wants, I may be permitted todeduce a conclusion, the importance of which will be demon-strated in the sequel Suppose two men, having no connectionwith each other, to be unequally situated in this respect, thatnature has been liberal to the one, and niggardly to the other; thefirst would evidently obtain a given amount of satisfaction at aless expense of labor Would it follow that the part of his forcesthus left disposable, if I may use the expression, would be aban-doned to inaction? and that this man, on account of the liberality

of nature, would be reduced to compulsory idleness? Not at all

It would follow that he could, if he wished it, dispose of theseforces to enlarge the circle of his enjoyments; that with an equalamount of labor he could procure two satisfactions in place ofone; in a word, that his progress would become more easy

I may be mistaken, but it appears to me that no science, noteven geometry, is founded on truths more unassailable Were anyone to prove to me that all these truths were so many errors, Ishould not only lose confidence in them, but all faith in evidenceitself; for what reasoning could one employ that should betterdeserve the acquiescence of our judgment than the evidence thusoverturned? The moment an axiom is discovered that shall con-tradict this other axiom—that a straight line is the shortest road

from one point to another—that instant the human mind has noother refuge, if it be a refuge, than absolute skepticism.

I positively feel ashamed thus to insist upon first principlesthat are so plain as to seem puerile And yet we must confess that,amid the complications of human transactions, such simple truthshave been overlooked; and in order to justify myself for detain-ing the reader so long upon what the English call truisms, I shallnotice here a singular error by which excellent minds haveallowed themselves to be misled Setting aside, neglecting entirely,the cooperation of nature in relation to the satisfaction of ourwants, they have laid down the absolute principle that all wealthcomes from labor On this foundation they have reared the fol-lowing erroneous syllogism:

“All wealth comes from labor:

“Wealth, then, is in proportion to labor

“But labor is in an inverse ratio to the liberality of nature:

“Ergo, wealth is inversely as the liberality of nature.”

Right or wrong, many economical laws owe their origin tothis singular reasoning Such laws cannot be otherwise than sub-versive of every sound principle in relation to the developmentand distribution of wealth; and this it is that justifies me inpreparing beforehand, by the explanation of truths very trivial inappearance, for the refutation of the deplorable errors and preju-dices under which society is now laboring

Let us analyze the cooperation of Nature of which I have ken Nature places two things at our disposal—materials andforces

spo-Most of the material objects that contribute to the satisfaction

of our wants and desires are brought into the state of utility thatrenders them fit for our use only by the intervention of labor, bythe application of the human faculties But the elements, theatoms, if you will, of which these objects are composed, are thegifts, I will add the gratuitous gifts, of nature This observation is

of the very highest importance, and will, I believe, throw a newlight upon the theory of wealth

The reader will have the goodness to bear in mind that I aminquiring at present in a general way into the moral and physicalconstitution of man, his wants, his faculties, his relations withnature—apart from the consideration of Exchange, which I shallenter upon in the next chapter We shall then see in what respect,and in what manner, social transactions modify the phenomena.

It is very evident that if man in an isolated state must, so tospeak, purchase the greater part of his satisfaction by an exertion,

by an effort, it is rigorously exact to say that prior to the tion of any such exertion, any such effort, the materials he finds

interven-at his disposal are the grinterven-atuitous gifts of ninterven-ature After the firsteffort on his part, however slight it may be, they cease to be gra-tuitous; and if the language of Political Economy had been alwaysexact, it would have been to material objects in this state, andbefore human labor had been bestowed upon them, that the term

raw materials (matieres premieres) would have been exclusively

applied

I regret that this gratuitous quality of the gifts of nature, terior to the intervention of labor, is of the very highest im-portance I said in my second chapter that Political Economy wasthe theory of value; I add now, and by anticipation, that thingsbegin to possess value only when it is given to them by labor Iintend to demonstrate afterwards that everything that is gratu-itous for man in an isolated state is gratuitous for man in his socialcondition, and that the gratuitous gifts of nature, whatever betheir UTILITY, have no value I say that a man who receives abenefit from nature, directly and without any effort on his part,cannot be considered as rendering himself an onerous service,and, consequently, that he cannot render to another any servicewith reference to things that are common to all Now, wherethere are no services rendered and received there is no value.All that I have said of materials is equally applicable to theforces nature places at our disposal Gravitation, the elasticity ofair, the power of the winds, the laws of equilibrium, vegetablelife, animal life, are so many forces we learn to turn to account.The pains and intelligence we bestow in this way always admit of

an-remuneration, for we are not bound to devote our efforts to theadvantage of others gratuitously But these natural forces in them-selves, and apart from all intellectual or bodily exertion are gra-tuitous gifts of Providence, and in this respect they remain devoid

of value through all the complications of human transactions.This is the leading idea of the present work

This observation would be of little importance, I allow, if thecooperation of nature were constantly uniform, if each man, at alltimes, in all places, in all circumstances, received from natureequal and invariable assistance In that case, science would be jus-tified in not taking into account an element that, remainingalways and everywhere the same, would affect the services ex-changed in equal proportions on both sides As in geometry weeliminate portions of lines common to two figures we comparewith each other, we might neglect a cooperation that is invariablypresent, and content ourselves with saying, as we have done hith-erto, “There is such a thing as natural wealth—Political Economyacknowledges it, and has no more concern with it.”

But this is not the true state of the matter The irresistible dency of the human mind, stimulated by self-interest and assisted

ten-by a series of discoveries, is to substitute natural and gratuitouscooperation for human and onerous concurrence; so that a givenutility, although remaining the same as far as the result and thesatisfactions it procures us are concerned, represents a smallerand smaller amount of labor In fact, it is impossible not to per-ceive the immense influence of this marvelous phenomenon onour notion of value For what is the result of it? This, that in everyproduct the gratuitous element tends to take the place of theonerous; that utility, being the result of two collaborations, ofwhich one is remunerated and the other is not, Value, which hasrelation only to the first of these united forces, is diminished,and makes room for a utility that is identically the same, and this

in proportion as we succeed in constraining nature to a moreefficacious cooperation So that we may say that men have asmany more satisfactions, as much more wealth, as they have lessvalue Now the majority of authors having employed these three

terms, utility, wealth, value, as synonymous, the result has been atheory that is not only not true, but the reverse of true I believesincerely that a more exact description of this combination of nat-ural forces and human forces in the business of production, inother words, a juster definition of Value, would put an end toinextricable theoretical confusion, and would reconcile schoolsthat are now divergent; and if I am now anticipating somewhat inentering on this subject here, my justification with the reader isthe necessity of explaining in the outset certain ideas of whichotherwise he would have difficulty in perceiving the importance.Returning from this digression, I resume what I had to sayupon man considered exclusively in an economical point of view.Another observation, which we owe to J.B Say, and which isalmost self-evident, although too much neglected by many au-thors, is that man creates neither the materials nor the forces ofnature, if we take the word create in its exact signification Thesematerials, these forces, have an independent existence Man canonly combine them or displace them for his own benefit or that

of others If for his own, he renders a service to himself—if forthe benefit of others, he renders service to his fellows and has theright to exact an equivalent service Whence it also follows thatvalue is proportional to the service rendered, and not at all to theabsolute utility of the thing For this utility may be in great partthe result of the gratuitous action of nature, in which case thehuman service, the onerous service, the service to be remuner-ated, is of little value This results from the axiom above estab-lished—namely, that to bring a thing to the highest degree of util-ity, the action of man is inversely as the action of nature

This observation overturns the doctrine that places value inthe materiality of things The contrary is the truth The mate-riality is a quality given by nature, and consequently gratuitous,and devoid of value, although of incontestable utility Humanaction, which can never succeed in creating matter, constitutesalone the service that man in a state of isolation renders to him-self, or that men in society render to each other; and it is the freeappreciation of these services that is the foundation of value Far,

then, from concluding with Adam Smith that it is impossible toconceive of value otherwise than as residing in material substance,

we conclude that between Matter and Value there is no possiblerelation

This erroneous doctrine Smith deduced logically from hisprinciple that those classes alone are productive who operate onmaterial substances He thus prepared the way for the modernerror of the socialists, who have never ceased representing asunproductive parasites those whom they term intermediaries be-tween the producer and consumer—the merchant, the retaildealer, etc Do they render services? Do they save us trouble bytaking trouble for us? In that case they create value, although they

do not create matter; and as no one can create matter, and we allconfine our exertions to rendering reciprocal services, we pro-nounce with justice that all, including agriculturists and man-ufacturers, are intermediaries in relation one to another

This is what I had to say at present upon the cooperation ofnature Nature places at our disposal, in various degrees de-pending on climate, seasons, and the advance of knowledge, butalways gratuitously, materials and forces Then these materialsand forces are devoid of value; it would be strange if they had any.According to what rule should we estimate them? In what waycould nature be paid, remunerated, compensated? We shall seeafterwards that exchange is necessary in order to determine value

We don’t purchase the goods of nature—we gather them; and if,

in order to appropriate them, a certain amount of effort is sary, it is in this effort, and not in the gifts of nature, that the prin-ciple of value resides

neces-Let us now consider that action of man which we designate,

in a general way, by the term labor

The word labor, like almost all the terms of Political Economy,

is very vague Different authors use it in a sense more or lessextended Political Economy has not had, like most other sciences,Chemistry for example, the advantage of constructing her ownvocabulary Treating of subjects that have been familiar to men’sthoughts since the beginning of the world, and the constant subject

of their daily talk, she has found a nomenclature ready made, andhas been forced to adopt it.

The meaning of the word labor is often limited exclusively tothe muscular action of man upon materials Hence those whoexecute the mechanical part of production are called the workingclasses

The reader will comprehend that I give to this word a moreextended sense I understand by labor the application of our fac-ulties to the satisfaction of our wants Wants, efforts, satisfactions,this is the circle of Political Economy Effort may be physical,intellectual, or even moral, as we shall immediately see

It is not necessary to demonstrate in this place that all ourorgans, all or nearly all our faculties, may concur and in point offact do concur, in production Attention, sagacity, intelligence,imagination, have assuredly their part in it

Mr Dunoyer, in his excellent work, Sur la Liberte du Travail,

has included, and with scientific exactness, our moral facultiesamong the elements to which we are indebted for our wealth—anidea as original and suggestive as it is just It is destined to enlargeand ennoble the field of Political Economy

I shall not dwell here upon that idea farther than as it mayenable me to throw a faint light upon the origin of a powerfulagent of production of which I shall have occasion to speak here-after—I mean Capital

If we examine in succession the material objects that tribute to the satisfaction of our wants, we shall discover withoutdifficulty that all or nearly all require, in order to bring them toperfection, more time, a larger portion of our life, than a man canexpend without recruiting his strength, that is to say, without sat-isfying his wants This supposes that those who had made thesethings had previously reserved, set aside, accumulated, provi-sions, to enable them to subsist during the operation

con-The same observation applies to satisfactions that have ing material belonging to them

noth-A clergyman cannot devote himself to preaching, a professor

to teaching, a magistrate to the maintenance of order, unless by

themselves or by others, they are put in possession of means ofsubsistence previously created.

Let us go a little higher Suppose a man isolated and forced tolive by hunting It is easy to comprehend that if every night heconsumed the whole game that his day’s hunting had furnished,

he could never set himself to any other work, to build a cottagefor example, or repair his arms or implements All progress would

be interdicted in his case

This not the proper place to define the nature and functions

of Capital My sole object at present is to show that certain moralvirtues cooperate very directly in the amelioration of our condi-tion, even when viewed exclusively with reference to wealth—among other virtues, order, foresight, self-control, economy

To foresee is one of our noblest privileges, and it is scarcelynecessary to say that, in all situations of life, the man who mostclearly foresees the probable consequences of his acts and deci-sions has the best chance of success

To control his appetites, to govern his passions, to sacrificethe present to the future, to submit to privations for the sake ofgreater but more distant advantages—such are the conditionsessential to the formation of capital; and capital, as we havealready partially seen, is itself the essential condition of all laborthat is in any degree complicated or prolonged It is quite evidentthat if we suppose two men placed in identically the same posi-tion, and possessed of the same amount of intelligence and activ-ity, that man would make the most progress who, having accumu-lated provisions, had placed himself in a situation to undertakeprotracted works, to improve his implements, and thus to makethe forces of nature cooperate in the realization of his designs

I shall not dwell longer on this We have only to look around us

to be convinced that all our forces, all our faculties, all our virtues,concur in furthering the advancement of man and of society.For the same reason, there are none of our vices that are notdirectly or indirectly the causes of poverty Idleness paralyzesefforts, which are the sinews of production Ignorance and errorgive our efforts a false direction Improvidence lays us open to

deceptions Indulgence in the appetites of the hour prevents theaccumulation of capital Vanity leads us to devote our efforts tofactitious enjoyments, in place of such as are real Violence andfraud provoke reprisals, oblige us to surround ourselves withtroublesome precautions, and entail a great waste and destruction

of power

I shall wind up these preliminary observations on man with aremark I have already made in relation to his wants It is this, thatthe elements discussed and explained in this chapter, and thatenter into and constitute economic science, are in their natureflexible and changeable Wants, desires, materials and powers fur-nished by nature, our muscular force, our organs, our intellectualfaculties, our moral qualities, all vary with the individual, andchange with time and place No two men, perhaps, are entirelyalike in any one of these respects, certainly not in all—nay more,

no man entirely resembles himself for two hours together Whatone knows, another is ignorant of—what one values, anotherdespises—here nature is prodigal, there niggardly—a virtue that

it is difficult to practice in one climate or latitude becomes easy inanother Economic science has not, then, like the exact sciences,the advantages of possessing a fixed measure, and absolute uncon-ditional truths—a graduated scale, a standard, which can beemployed in measuring the intensity of desires, of efforts, and ofsatisfactions Were we even to devote ourselves to solitary labor,like certain animals, we should still find ourselves placed in cir-cumstances in some degree different; and were our external cir-cumstances alike, were the medium in which we act the same forall, we should still differ from each other in our desires, ourwants, our ideas, our sagacity, our energy, our manner of estimat-ing and appreciating things, our foresight, our initiative—so that

a great and inevitable inequality would manifest itself In truth,absolute isolation, the absence of all relations among men, is only

an idle fancy coined in the brain of Rousseau But supposing thatthis antisocial state, called the state of nature, had ever existed, Icannot help inquiring by what chain of reasoning Rousseau andhis adepts have succeeded in planting Equality there? We shall

afterwards see that Equality, like Wealth, like Liberty, like nity, like Unity, is the end; it is not the starting point It rises out

Frater-of the natural and regular development Frater-of societies The tendency

of human nature is not away from, but toward, Equality This ismost consoling and most true

Having spoken of our wants, and our means of providing forthem, it remains to say a word respecting our satisfactions Theyare the result of the entire mechanism we have described

It is by the greater or less amount of physical, intellectual, andmoral satisfactions that mankind enjoys, that we discover whetherthe machine works well or ill This is the reason why the wordconsummation (consumption3), adopted by our Economistswould have an apposite meaning if we used it in its etymologicalsignification as synonymous with end, or completion Unfortu-nately, in common, and even in scientific, language, it presents tothe mind a gross and material idea, exact without doubt whenapplied to our physical wants, but not at all so when used withreference to those of a more elevated order The cultivation ofwheat, the manufacture of woolen cloth, terminate in consump-tion (consummation) But can this be said with equal propriety ofthe works of the artist, the songs of the poet, the studies of thelawyer, the prelections of the professor, the sermons of the cler-gyman? It is here that we again experience the inconvenience ofthat fundamental error that caused Adam Smith to circumscribePolitical Economy within the limits of a material circle; and thereader will pardon me for frequently making use of the term sat-isfaction, as applicable to all our wants and all our desires, and asmore in accordance with the larger scope I hope to be able to give

to the science

Political Economists have been frequently reproached withconfining their attention exclusively to the interests of the con-sumer “You forget the producer,” we are told But satisfaction

3 The term consumption employed by English Economists, the French Economists translate by consummation.—Translator.

being the end and design of all our efforts—the grand mation or termination of the economic phenomena—is it not evi-dent that it is there that the touchstone of progress is to be found?

consum-A man’s happiness and well-being are not measured by his effortsbut by his satisfactions, and this holds equally true of society inthe aggregate This is one of those truths that are never disputedwhen applied to an individual, but that are constantly disputedwhen applied to society at large The phrase to which exceptionhas been taken only means this, that Political Economy estimatesthe worth of what we do not by the labor it costs us to do it, but

by the ultimate result, which resolves itself definitively into anincrease or diminution of the general prosperity

We have said, in reference to our wants and desires, that thereare no two men exactly alike The same thing may be said of oursatisfactions: they are not held in equal estimation by all, whichverifies the common saying that tastes differ Now it is by theintensity of our desires, and the variety of our tastes, that thedirection of our efforts is determined It is here that the influence

of morals upon industry becomes apparent Man, as an ual, may be the slave of tastes which are factitious, puerile, andimmoral In this case it is self-evident that, his powers being lim-ited, he can only satisfy his depraved desires at the expense ofthose that are laudable and legitimate But when society comesinto play, this evident axiom is marked down as an error We areled to believe that artificial tastes, illusory satisfactions, which weacknowledge as the source of individual poverty, are neverthelessthe cause of national wealth, as providing an outlet to manufac-tures If it were so, we should arrive at the miserable conclusionthat the social state places man between poverty and vice Oncemore, Political Economy reconciles, in the most rigorous and sat-isfactory manner, these apparent contradictions

individ-4

E XCHANGE

Exchange is Political Economy—it is Society itself—for it is

impossible to conceive Society as existing withoutExchange, or Exchange without Society I shall not pretend

in this chapter to exhaust so vast a subject To present even anoutline of it would require the entire volume

If men, like snails, lived in complete isolation, if they did notexchange their ideas and exertions, and had no bargain or tran-sactions with each other, we might have multitudes indeed—human units—individuals living in juxtaposition—but we couldnot have Society

Nay, we should not even have individuals To man isolation isdeath But then, if he cannot live out of society, the legitimateconclusion is that the social state is his natural state

All the sciences tend to establish this truth, which was so tle understood by the men of the eighteenth century that theyfounded morals and politics on the contrary assertion They werenot content with placing the state of nature in opposition to thesocial state—they gave the first a decided preference “Men were

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